Homer, in his descriptions of shields, swords, and spears. But,
according to most Homeric critics, the later continuators of the
Greek Epics, about 800-540 B.C., are men living in an age of iron
weapons, and of round bucklers worn on the left arm. Yet, unlike
Virgil, they always give their heroes arms of bronze, and, unlike
Virgil (as we shall see), they do not introduce the buckler worn
on the left arm. They adhere conscientiously to the use of the
vast Mycenaean shield, in their time obsolete. Yet, by the theory,
in many other respects they innovate at will, introducing corslets
and greaves, said to be unknown to the beginners of the Greek
Epics, just as Virgil innovates in bucklers and iron weapons. All
this theory seems inconsistent, and no ancient poet, not even
Virgil, is an archaiser of the modern sort.

All attempts to prove that the Homeric poems are the work of
several centuries appear to rest on a double hypothesis: first,
that the later contributors to the _ILIAD_ kept a steady eye
on the traditions of the remote Achaean age of bronze; next, that
they innovated as much as they pleased.

Poets of an uncritical age do not archaise. This rule is
overlooked by the critics who represent the Homeric poems as a
complex of the work of many singers in many ages. For example,
Professor Percy Gardner, in his very interesting _New chapters
in Greek History_ (1892), carries neglect of the rule so far as
to suppose that the late Homeric poets, being aware that the
ancient heroes could not ride, or write, or eat boiled meat,
consciously and purposefully represented them as doing none of
these things. This they did "on the same principle on which a
writer of pastoral idylls in our own day would avoid the mention